"Glad All Over"

I listened to the second disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Glad All Over," specifically in the line "My temperature's low; fever is high."  "My temperature's low" is sung almost entirely to C# notes (I think "low" is sung with a descending glissando from C# to A), and "fever is high" is sung to a group of ascending notes (C# C# D E, I think).  The first half of the melody for this phrase descends, and the second half ascends, musically giving a sense of the "low" and "high" in the lyrics.

This is also present in the version on Live at the BBC and in Carl Perkins' original (although Perkins' is a half-step lower, and this particular line might have some slight differences in articulation).

"For You Blue"

I listened to Let It Be on 30 January and Let It Be... Naked on 31 January because according to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, some of the Let It Be songs were recorded on those two days fifty years ago.  I noticed something about "For You Blue," but I had to do some research before I wrote about it.

About a minute in, George Harrison says, "Bop, cat, bop."  I think this might be a bit of Gene Vincent's influence.  Leading into an instrumental section in Vincent's "Bluejean Bop," he shouts to his band, "Bop, Blue Caps, bop."  Harrison's "Bop, cat, bop" - spoken during an instrumental section - isn't too dissimilar.  In the Anthology book, Harrison even mentions "Bluejean Bop" specifically (p. 49).

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and the Anthology 3 liner notes mention that the Beatles played through three Vincent songs ("Ain't She Sweet," "Who Slapped John?" and "Be-Bop-A-Lula") during the Abbey Road sessions (on 24 July 1969) but that "For You Blue" was recorded before this (on 25 January 1969).  Anthology 3, however, also explains that "the version on the album Let It Be featured a lead vocal re-recorded by George on 8 January 1970."  It's possible, then, that running through those Gene Vincent songs in July 1969 recalled "Bluejean Bop" and eventually resulted in the "Bop, cat, bop" in "For You Blue."

"The Hippy Hippy Shake"

When I listened to On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 recently, I noticed that some of the "shake"s in "The Hippy Hippy Shake" (specifically the one after the line "Do the hippy hippy shake shake with all of your might") are sung with a melisma (G E).  Since the note changes, there's a musical sense of that "shak[ing]."

I think this is also present in the version on Live at the BBC, but it's more subtle.

"Lucille"

I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 yester-day and noticed a few small things.

In "Lucille," the "go" in the line "Well, you know I love you baby; I'll never let you go" is sung with a melisma (Eb C).  Musically, this gives an impression of movement, although the word has a slightly different sense in this context.

I referenced the version of "Lucille" on the first Live at the BBC and discovered that this feature is present there too, but when I referenced Little Richard's original, I found that it doesn't even contain this line.  It's not in the Everly Brothers' version either (which presenter Brian Matthew specifically mentions in his introduction to the song on Live at the BBC).  The Beatles seem to have changed Little Richard's "Lucille, baby, satisfy my heart" into "Lucille, baby, satisfy my soul," and then fashioned their own line ("Well, you know I love you baby; I'll never let you go") to form something of a rhyme with "soul."

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

Lately, I've been working on figuring out the bass part in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."  So far, I have the first two verses.  I'd figured out the Moog part in the second verse back in November 2017, so now I have enough to make a recording worth it.  I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the piano part; I'm not sure that what I have is entirely accurate (because I didn't play anything in the bass register), but it fills out the sound, at least.

This is just the second verse:

I don't yet have a Moog (it's near the top of my list of instruments to get, but it'll still be a long time before I can afford one), but I did the best I could to get close to that sound.  I used a square wave sample on my Nord Electro 5, and I turned on the velocity filter and tried to play softly to get a mellower sound.  It's a bit uneven, but it's the best I could do.

"Martha My Dear"

Last month, I learned some of the brass parts in "Martha My Dear."  I think what I have is tuba (doubled on trombone) and trumpet.  I can play trombone, but I'm not in practice and this part is beyond my skill level anyway, so I used the mellotron brass sound.

I learned the sections from ~0:38 to ~0:59 and from ~1:39 to ~2:01.  They're only slightly different.  For my recording, I used the second iteration:

There's a second trumpet that plays a high F, but it lasts for so long that the mellotron tape runs out before the note should stop, so I didn't include that in my recording.

"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"

Over the last two years, I learned enough parts in "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" to make it worth recording.  In February 2017, I learned the bass part and the mellotron trombone part at the end, and last September, I learned the organ part.  In reading Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, I discovered that what I thought were guitar tremolos are actually played with a mandolin sound on mellotron (Chris Thomas, who played both mellotron parts, describes this on page 160).  I believe this simply doubles the organ part, albeit an octave lower.  I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords.

My recording is just a section of the song, roughly 1:23 to 2:30.

I used the mellotron samples available on the Nord website (played on my Electro 5D).  There are two trombone sounds available, and I used the Mk I sound.  Flipping back and forth between my recording and the original, it sounds exactly the same (although I think I played the part with too much legato; I should have broken up the phrases a little).

"It's All Too Much"

According to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Yellow Submarine was released on 17 January 1969.  I listened to the album on the fiftieth anniversary of its release and remembered two small features I'd noticed in "It's All Too Much" back when I listened to the album in September.

The "much" at the end of each chorus ("For us to take, it's all too much," "So take a piece but not too much," "And what I do is all too much") is sung with a melisma (B A B).  Because there's an extra syllable, there's a sense of the excess of "too much."

The "free" in the lines "Send me on a silver sun / Where I know that I'm free" is also sung with a melisma (B A D B).  Here, the extra syllables give a sense of that freedom; the word isn't limited to the single syllable it has when spoken.

In looking at the song again in order to write this post, I noticed something else: one of the verses begins with the line "Floating down the stream of time," which bears some resemblance to part of the line "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream" in "Tomorrow Never Knows."

"Matchbox"

The other thing I noticed when I listened to the second disc of Live at the BBC is in "Matchbox."  The "go" in the last "I ain't got no matches, but I sure got a long way to go" is sung with a melisma (C A), musically giving a sense of movement.  This is also in the Beatles' studio version and in Carl Perkins' original.

"Nothin' Shakin' (But the Leaves on the Trees)"

I listened to the second disc of Live at the BBC yester-day and noticed a couple small things.

In "Nothin' Shakin' (But the Leaves on the Trees)," the "away" in the line "She locked my heart and threw away the keys" is sung with a melisma (E D C), which musically gives something of a sense of the distance the keys were thrown.

"Johnny B. Goode"

The last thing I noticed when I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC a couple days ago is that in "Johnny B. Goode," the phrase "sun goes down" in the lines "Many people comin' from miles around / To hear you play your music till the sun goes down" descends (D C# A, I think), musically giving a sense of the sunset.

Looking at my old notes, I discovered that I noticed this about Berry's original back in May 2018.  An-other note I made (in June 2016) about his original that's also applicable to the Beatles' version is that one line could be transcribed as either "He could play his guitar just like a ring in a bell" or "He could play his guitar just like a-ringin' a bell."  The first implies that guitar playing is an inherent natural ability that Johnny B. Goode has; the other implies that he could play guitar with extreme ease.

"You Really Got a Hold on Me"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC a couple days ago is that "always" in the line "Seems that I'm always thinkin' of you" in "You Really Got a Hold on Me" is sung with a melisma (F# F# E), musically giving a sense of the duration of "always."  This is also present in the Beatles' studio version and in Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' original "You've Really Got a Hold on Me."